Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican National Migration Service plans to upgrade four border crossings with Tanzania, in Cabo Delgado, a region under armed conflict in the north of the country, a source from the service told Lusa.
“We are going to modernise the crossing points to make them more dynamic,” said Ivo Sampanha, spokesman for SENAMI, regarding a tender launched for works on the infrastructure.
“There is already a budget, and the process of contracting the work is underway,” in the public tender phase, he said.
The Mozambican authorities and several international reports pointed out the porosity of the border with Tanzania as one of the factors that facilitate the entry of rebels participating in the armed insurgency that has hit Cabo Delgado for four and a half years.
The project now established foresees works in four crossing points: Namoto, in Palma district, the post of Nangade district ,and the posts of Ngapa and Negomano in Mueda district.
According to the SENAMI spokesman, the modernisation will cost around 40 million meticais (600,000 euros) and is part of the plan for the reconstruction of Cabo Delgado province following the destruction caused by the armed insurgency.
Of a total of nine crossing points that Cabo Delgado province has with Tanzania, only four are currently in operation.
The other five were closed because of movement restrictions created to contain the spread of Covid-19 over the past two years and remain so because of insurgent attacks.
Instead of migration agents, in these [five] closed posts are the Defence and Security Forces (FDS), but “SENAMI is attentive to the return of the population and therefore may reopen them” if justified, Ivo Sampanha concluded.
Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas but has been terrorised since 2017 by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.
There are 784,000 internally displaced people due to the conflict, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and around 4,000 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project.
Since July 2021, an offensive by government troops with Rwandan support, later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has allowed areas where there was a rebel presence to recover, but their flight has provoked new attacks in other districts used as a passage or temporary refuge.
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